


My Own Private Idaho

by Marasa



Series: Mike and Jay Do Movies [4]
Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Feelings Realization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Narcolepsy, Sex Work, parental neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25524583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: The road was never ending.
Relationships: Mike/Jay
Series: Mike and Jay Do Movies [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591657
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	My Own Private Idaho

The road was never ending.

It stretched over the hills like a silver snake. Empty, quiet; they were the only ones out here, felt like they always had been. The motorcycle was stalled on the side of the road— some faulty component. Mike was knelt down next to it, fiddling his fingers into the puzzle of chrome at its side. His shirt was off but he kept his leather jacket on. The wind against his torso, clammy with focus-sweat, was refreshing, perhaps even biting. 

“I’ve been here before.”

Mike looked over his shoulder. Jay stood in the middle of the two lane road with his hands in his pockets. He scanned the area for any kind of landmark that would affirm his suspicion, but there wasn’t so much as a tree or a bush out here for what could have been miles.

“Get out of the middle of the road,” Mike grumbled, turning back to the bike. “There’s no speed limit out here.”

“I think I’ve seen this place in a dream, Mike.” Jay began humming some tune under his breath, maybe didn’t even realize he was doing it until Mike asked him what that song was called. He’d heard it before, but it escaped him now. 

“Are you coming to ease my headache? Do you give good head?” Jay recited it like a poem, all musicality draining from his words in exchange for cold musings. “Am I good in bed?” 

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “I guess so.”

“I don’t sleep. I dream.”

Mike pinched a loose screw at the bottom of the bike’s engine and twisted it tight. 

“Hey, I think I got it.” Jay’s back was to Mike but Mike could see his chin tilted slightly upward. Mike followed his gaze. The sky was a cloudy beige, sienna in the west where the sun was nearing the horizon. Mike stood. “Jay, let’s get goin’.”

Jay’d gone quiet, though, dangerously so. His spine was tight as a bowstring. His muscles tensed and relaxed minutely again and again, as if he were falling in a dream. And then in a second, his knees were buckling. 

Mike closed the space between them in record time, a blur of panicked, protective movement as he caught Jay before he could collapse to the asphalt.

_ “Mmm…m-mmm—“ _

“Shh, okay.” Jay was dead weight in his arms, but he was still easily eighty pounds lighter than Mike. The husky, muscled build did Mike well; he had yet to receive any complaints. If anything, he had acquired some regulars who paid him consistent money and who loved the slight softness of his sides and his pecs. Once, a john had put it into his mind that he could see Mike entering bear territory once he hit his thirties.

“Do you shave your chest?” the john had asked.

“Yeah.”

“Once you put on a few more pounds, you should stop. Want a cigarette?”

Mike took the cigarette and planned to take the advice, but he was six years out from hitting thirty and for now, he didn’t mind the hairlessness of his chest against the wind. 

Mike wrapped his arms under Jay’s and around his chest. The heels of Jay’s ratty converse dragged against the pavement as Mike hauled him off to the side of the road. Mike sat them down on the grass. It was dry and brown with fall’s cold. Mike huffed a breath as he maneuvered Jay so his upper half was in his lap. Jay snored and Mike tucked Jay’s head under his chin and fixed Jay’s leg when he saw it was twisted strangely. 

Mike watched two cars pass seven minutes apart. Neither of them stopped. Where had common human decency gone? The truth was Mike had it handled, Jay had it handled. But the cars passing them didn’t know that. What if one of them was really hurt? What if they had skidded out onto the side of the road and had broken their poor little feet and couldn’t get up to drive the motorcycle back into town for help?

Jay’s eyelashes fluttered ticklishly against Mike’s neck fifteen minutes later. He murmured something, groggy and confused. Mike rubbed up and down his back, let Jay’s head fall onto his shoulder so he could get a proper look at him. They might have looked like the Pieta out here, but no one was here to see them. In the past, Jay had been frightened at the thought of strangers watching him sleep but this was Mike and Mike held him like he was precious, like he was gold or platinum or made of diamonds.

Jay fisted a hand in Mike’s jacket. His thumbnail scratched absently at Mike’s bare pec.

“Are you ready to go?”

Jay gave a small nod, but they sat there for a few more minutes in silence, the both of them watching together as another car bustled down the road. 

It didn’t stop.

* * *

Milwaukee. 

No endless fields in this piece of the state but instead a financial district constructed of concrete and glass. They were meeting one of Jay’s clients.

Jay took a pack of spearmint gum from his suede coat pocket as they walked down the city sidewalk. He gave Mike a piece, took a piece himself.

“So you talk about me to your clients, then?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “He wanted a threesome. Asked if I had any friends. I said, ‘No friends but I do have this enemy who’s also in the same line of work. And he’s not one to turn down a few extra bucks.’” Mike scoffed, bumped his shoulder against Jay’s. “Who knows— maybe he’s into the idea of me and you butting heads or something.”

“Hate sex?” Mike smirked. “Yeah, that’s hot.”

The hotel lobby was black and white tile, plum-colored velvet couches and armchairs. A comfortable rabble echoed between the large marble pillars stretching from floor to ceiling. Jay put his finger to the glass of the exotic fish tank as they waited for the elevator to arrive. A blue spotted fish gaped at it and followed after Jay’s finger when he drew it in a figure eight.

They took the gold-plated elevator up to the eighth floor. Jay read the room number from his text messages. Mike led them down the hall and around the corner.

“Do you want me to get rough with you tonight?” Mike asked after knocking on the room’s door.

Jay sighed, pushed back his hair. “We’ll see where it goes.”

The man who answered the door was easily ten years older than them. His hair was thinning and he was in a business-like button down, untucked from his slacks. Mike wondered if he was in town for business but then realized he didn’t care.

They removed their shoes once inside, draped their coats over the back of a nearby chair.

“Wow,” the man said. “Look at you two. Do you model?”

“I’ve found I do better in motion,” Mike said. “What do you think about that?”

“Yeah.” The man nodded. “Yeah, let’s see.”

Jay informed him they couldn’t start until they’d received payment, at which point the man expressed confusion because he thought payment came after. No, Jay said, because they’d been ripped off before. 

“Fool me once, shame on you,” Mike said.

“And there won’t be a second time,” Jay said. “How do you want to do this?”

The man took his phone out of his pocket. “Do you take Paypal?”

***

This guy must have been high class because he had paid for more time than needed for a quick fuck. He was languid in his movements. He sucked Mike’s cock indulgently. Jay sat beside Mike against the mahogany headboard. Their shoulders were touching and it was electric to Mike, who was already so close after ten minutes of a wet mouth suctioned around him. 

Jay threaded his fingers in their client’s soft hair and watched Mike’s face intently as he pushed the man further down onto his dick.

Mike’s head dropped back, mouth falling open.  _ “Fuuuck.” _

The man wanted inside of Jay then, had paid for this, so Jay laid back and wrapped his arms around his freckled shoulders and moaned tiny breaths as the stranger pumped his cock in and out of him. Jay looked angelic, dark tresses strewn across the white pillowcase, cheeks flushed, so beautifully fucked out.

“Is he giving it to you good? Hm?”

Jay cracked his eyes open. Mike hunched further over the man’s back, taking his hips and grinding his dick, hot and wet with precum, against the crack of his ass. The guy had made the point of informing them that bottoming wasn’t his thing. Mike was permitted this form of stimulation, however, and was even encouraged with gasped praise from the man’s lips against Jay’s shoulder.

Looking at Jay now, Mike wished they were alone. He’d tell Jay how otherworldly looked right now— slick-lipped, bright-cheeked, pupils blown wide, the lamplight twinkling in his dark irises.

They only ever slept together when they were with a client. Sometimes Mike was just an accessory, kind of like now, but there were times when he was tasked with bringing pleasure to both the client and Jay at the same time. There had been a night in Chicago that had been his favorite. Jay and this guy had been laying back and kissing on the bed while Mike hovered over them. That was the night Mike realized just how pretty Jay was, how he was glad he was the one giving him what he needed. 

Mike had held a hand on either of their hips, thumb stroking at the slick skin there before wrapping his hands around their cocks. They’d squirmed beautifully and moaned into each other’s mouths but it had been Jay who effortlessly demanded Mike’s attention with his panting mouth and his sultry gaze as he leaked precum into Mike’s palm. Their client had ended up riding Mike’s cock while Jay sat on Mike’s face, Jay facing the other man so they could kiss and moan into each other’s mouths. 

They’d cum quite fast that night and perhaps even simultaneously, but tonight’s session was long and drawn out, almost maddening. The slow, rhythmic stimulation to Jay’s prostate after this long had his cock drooling and his rim tender. Saliva spilled shyly from the corner of his mouth, his cheeks on fire. He was losing his mind at being thoroughly edged.

Mike grinded his teeth, rutted harder between the man’s cheeks. Rough sex? He was stupid for ever considering that a possibility. Jay needed something gentler but constant— none of this fickle crap.

Jay reached for Mike over the man’s shoulder, eyes closed and eyebrows tented, nipples peaked and cock dribbling. His fingers threaded through Mike’s dark hair, fingernails scratching his scalp. 

When Jay tugged him down slightly with another gasp and spread of his legs around the cock massaging his prostate, Mike bent down closer to meet him. Jay kissed him and Mike kissed him back, deep. Jay’s tongue was soft and hot, almost limp with the pleasure being thrust into him. 

They parted and Jay pleaded to Mike for relief in a whisper of, “Please.”

“Hey, boss,” Mike said into their client’s ear. “He needs it. He’s so ready. Make him cum.”

His thrusts sped up only slightly and the man let out an obnoxiously loud groan as he came into the condom. He shivered hard above Jay once, twice, before coming to a stop. Jay whined in confusion and arched forward when the man pulled out. Their client sighed in relief and slid off the bed and onto his feet, commending them for such a great performance.

The two left on the bed watched him disappear into the bathroom. They heard him lock the door. 

“Guess, uh. He’s done then,” Mike said. 

Jay whined comically. “That  _ dick. _ ”

Jay might have recovered quicker any other time, brought himself off with his own hand, but he was edged and frustrated and so loose and pliant on the bed after being so close to orgasm for so long. Mike’s heart softened as he looked down at him. He bent down, covered Jay’s body with his own. 

“Tell me how you want it,” Mike said lowly. “Want me inside you? My mouth? Which one would feel good, baby?”

“Please.  _ Please _ , Mike.”

Jay didn’t have to pay him. That was the thing with Jay; he could have anything of Mike’s, could demand anything of him, and Mike didn’t have to see a cent.

What did that mean, he wondered.

Mike slid down Jay’s body, mouthing at his quivering stomach, breathing appreciatively at the faint trail of hair leading to his groin, before finally wrapping his lips around Jay’s throbbing dick. 

Jay rolled his hips up into Mike’s mouth in little pulses as he chased that delicious pleasure. Panting breath and moans escaped his lips increasingly louder with each bob of Mike’s head over him. Jay fisted the sheets in his shaking hands. 

Mike thought Jay would have shot already after so long of being almost there. He was sounding almost pained, so Mike resorted to slipping his middle finger inside of him and circling his prostate. Mike hummed compassionately at the twitchy clinging of Jay’s rim, puffy and used, around his digit.

Jay cried as he came undone down Mike’s throat. Mike swallowed him down deeper and held him there until Jay was done, wrapped a hand around his own erection and came onto the sheets. Mike pulled off of Jay but kept his throbbing tip between his lips, suckling a few more times until he was sure Jay’s cockhead was clean before letting him go.

Jay was flushed from his face down to his chest. Mike rested his chin on Jay’s sternum. He could feel Jay’s heart like this, fluttering like a trapped bird inside his chest.

It was of no concern what their client was doing in the bathroom. It might as well have just been them, kind of felt like it now in the aftermath. Mike was sated and sticky, and Jay was beautiful and debauched, dewy with sex sweat and smelling wonderful.

Mike nosed at Jay’s chest, dragged his flat tongue over his salty skin, fragrant in his mouth. Jay hummed and there were fingers back in Mike’s hair, their grip looser now but present, encouraging maybe. Neither of them knew what this meant; this kind of quiet after the storm wasn’t usual for them. It was usually hurried as in the event of a wife soon to be returning home, at times rushed by a client believing to have done something ‘wrong’ by paying for it.

They didn’t know what this was or what it meant for them. Did it have to mean anything? Did Mike want it to mean anything? He wanted to be close to Jay right now. And Jay felt the same as he kept Mike close to him with a hand in his hair, their naked bodies draped in cool, satin sheets and  _ this— _ this is what they needed. 

“No, no, no, hey. Jay,” Mike said as Jay’s eyes sank shut. He propped himself up on his forearms. “Hey. Where you goin’? Stay with me.”

Jay made an indignant noise as he fought to not nod off again. “You’re putting me to sleep.”

“Should I help keep you awake?” Mike pinched Jay’s earlobe. “Stimulate you?”

Jay pulled at Mike’s nipple. “Take me home.”

Mike slid his arms under Jay’s back and held him. The bathroom sink was running, muffled behind the closed door and out the hotel’s window, the city sparkled so bright that it might have seemed that God had sprinkled glitter across the entire world.   


* * *

Jay’s father answered the trailer door. There was a grease smeared on his white undershirt. His fingers were stained black.

Mike stepped up the wooden steps, sidestepping when entering so Jay’s head wouldn’t bump the doorframe. He was still asleep in Mike’s arms. This time was more fretful than the last; Jay was rarely not making a strangled sound, face twitching harshly. He’d told Mike in the past he was not aware of his surroundings whenever he fell asleep but Mike wondered about the truth of that this time, as Jay only grew more fretful once they were inside. 

Jay didn’t get along with his father. Jay said that if that wasn’t the case, he wouldn’t be living this kind of life. Or maybe he would. He didn’t know.

Where did he begin and where did his traumas end?

Jay had been stoic early this morning, not saying much but still moving forward with an admirable determination. Or up until they were stepping off the bike and onto the gravel driveway when suddenly Jay succumbed to the jittery nervousness and promptly sank to his knees and curled up on himself.

Mike set Jay down in the huge, leather armchair. His brow was furrowed deeply. His hand was curled to his mouth as if he wished he were awake enough to chew his nails.

“What do you want?” Jay’s father asked. 

Mike nodded to the one in the chair. “He needed a number.”

“A number? What number?”

“You can ask him. Where’s the shitter?”

Mike was directed down the hall. He took a piss in the toilet and ran his hands under the cold water of the faucet. He was slow on his return and peeked nosely in through half-open bedroom doors. He stopped at this one with the patina-dusted brass doorknob and frayed carpet.

Mike stepped into Jay’s bedroom. Movie posters were thumbtacked to the beige walls. The desk was cluttered with papers crammed with words and doodles. There was a bookmark in a biography about Charlie Chaplin on his bookshelf; Jay was almost halfway done with it. Mike removed a small, leatherbound journal tucked between  _ Catcher in the Rye _ and a book of poetry by Silvia Plath. Mike opened it gingerly. At the first sight of slanted, scrawled handwriting, he closed it. Mike brought the top of the book to his nose and inhaled the smell of aged paper. 

_ “A- Agh!” _

Mike whipped his head in the direction of the commotion coming from down the hall. He threw the journal down onto Jay’s desk and rushed back to the living room.

Jay was still in the armchair but he was awake. His eyes were wide with shocked confusion, made even worse when he realized it was his father looming over him. Jay’s dad had his greasy hands in a vice grip around Jay’s wrists. Jay was attempting to fight back but when he failed to free himself, he resorted to kicking his legs in a fury, his heel catching his father’s hip hard. 

_ “Ow! You little shit!” _

Mike rushed forward. “Hey!”

Jay slumped into unconsciousness at the sound of Mike’s voice. Mike pushed Jay’s father back by the shoulder and the man followed the suggestion of distance. He pushed back his hair which was a shade or two lighter than Jay’s own.

“What the fuck, man?”

“He woke up,” Jay’s father began, out of breath and panting, “and he started swinging outta nowhere. I didn’t know what I fuckin’ did, I was just standing there over ‘im, tryin’ to talk to him and it was like he didn’t even see me.”

“You can’t get up in his face like that.” Mike said nothing about how he could get close to Jay like that without Jay punching his lights out. “He gets, disoriented. Confused. When he wakes up. How the fuck do you not know this?”

“His mom used to deal with him.”

“And where were you?”

“I was working,” he snapped. “That’s all I’ve ever known. Working.”

“That’s all we’ve known too,” Mike said.

Jay’s father looked Mike up and down, taking in his leather jacket and his midnight blue shirt tight on his torso, his denim pants narrow on his hips— all of which were clean. 

“Something tells me we’re not in the same business.”

“Work’s work,” Mike said, “and work makes money.” He gave the older man a humorless smile and went over to Jay. 

The tight puffs of breath out of Jay’s mouth motorboated his lips quietly. Mike took gentle hold of him and fixed him so he was not so crumpled up. Mike set Jay’s neck straight, helped him sit up, kind of hated seeing him like this.

It still scared him sometimes. It had scared him like hell the first time he ever saw Jay go unconscious. 

They had met at a threesome for a woman living in a rich suburb of Milwaukee. They had been hired separately and without the knowledge that their usual solo performance would be something of a duet. It was no problem. The money made it no problem.

They were getting undressed in a pink-painted bedroom as the woman watched from her position against the headboard. Mike made a show of sliding off his clothes, touching his torso and dipping his hands under his waistband. He remembered how Jay had been blinking hard beside him as he slowly ridded himself of his shirt, shaking his head slightly every now and then. Jay had removed his jacket and then immediately collapsed face first onto the hardwood floor.

“Ah!” their client shrieked. 

Mike’s rubbernecked back and forth between the man on the floor and the woman in the bed, unsure of what the fuck to do. It was only comical when thinking back on it; it had been horrific in the moment.

It was the norm for Jay, though, and he came to rather quickly, an apology on his lips beside the blood from his busted nose. Their client was too shaken up to continue the evening. Mike was too pumped up on adrenaline to get it up. She gave Jay a tampon for his right nostril and asked him if he needed an ambulance. 

He declined.

This was who Mike had decided to stick by for however long, perhaps the rest of his life. But it was times like this when Jay was too lax, too vulnerable, that Mike feared for him. 

He took a deep breath to calm his hammering heart, to no avail. Mike reached into his back pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes. He took one out, put it between his lips.

“Does he do this a lot?” Jay’s dad asked as he lit Mike’s cigarette. “He didn't do it as a kid. Not a lot. Not like that.” Mike took a drag, rubbed his brow with the heel of his hand. 

“It gets worse when he’s stressed.”

Jay’s dad left into the kitchen. Mike smoked his cigarette, ashing it in a crystal glass of whiskey on the table near the sofa. Jay took an audibly deep breath through his nose as if he’d nodded off willingly at the end of a lazy afternoon watching TV and reading mystery novels. He blinked awake, eyes shifting slowly from left to right. When he recognized his surroundings, he gave a deflated sigh. 

Perhaps it was like he had always remembered. Maybe it didn’t look like his childhood home at all. Mike wondered which would be worse for Jay.

His eyes, amber with the nearby lamplight, slid up to where Mike stood next to his chair.

Mike didn’t have to say anything; it didn’t really matter. They understood exactly what the other meant without any words at all. The steady rise and fall of Mike’s chest and a brief flex of his fingertips in Jay’s direction from the hand hanging by his side said,  _ “Hey, sweetheart. You okay?” _ And Jay, in the twitch of his left eyebrow and a flutter of his eyelashes, said,  _ “I’m fine. Stay close.” _

Jay’s father came back into the room, a beer in his hand. Jay groaned deep in his chest.

“Are you good? Not gonna bite my head off again or anything?” Jay glared up at his father, his fingers curled atop his stomach. “Do you want a drink? I don’t have anything other than beer.”

Jay’s eyes fell closed for a second. He gave a small shake of his head. “Need… mom’s number.”

“She doesn’t have a cellphone.”

“She used to have one.”

“That was a burner phone. She’s had plenty of them throughout the years.” Jay’s father almost looked sorry for Jay. He was still rough and rigid but there existed that worry on his face unique to fathers when looking upon their troubled spawn. “She would throw out her phones every other month. But I can give you an address. She might be there.”

Jay nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

The paper handed to him read an address three states away. Jay folded it and put it in his jacket pocket closest to his heart.

* * *

There was no time to waste; twenty years was long enough. Jay needed to see his mother.

“Why do you need to see your mom?”

They were off on the side of the road, again. This time they had driven the motorcycle over grass and down a nearby hill to maintain their privacy as they camped out. They’d started a fire with Mike’s lighter and some dry grass and twigs picked up along the way. The sun had long since set. The night air was cool.

“What guy doesn’t need to see his mom?” Jay hugged his legs a bit tighter to his chest, looking tenser than Mike who was laid out on his side a few feet away.

“I don’t.”

Jay’s eyes snapped over to him. “Take that back.”

“What? I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

For a second, Jay was silent. He looked near to saying something hurtful, or perhaps launching himself at Mike and tussling with him. Mike maintained a stolid expression but there was something in his eyes visible even in this darkness, a sort of wounded remembrance at the mention of his mother. 

Jay turned back to the fire’s flames, the harshness in his face melting away. “Did she hurt you?”

“I guess.” Mike gave a deep sigh. “In a way.”

“Do you miss your mom?”

“Only sometimes,” Mike said. “Do you miss your mom?”

Jay opened his mouth, closed it. He didn’t look away from the fire. “I… I wanna go home. Not to the trailer. I—… I’m tired of doing this, Mike. Being in places I don’t remember how I got to. Waking up in beds that aren’t mine, y’know. With people I can’t stand. You’re the only one I  _ can _ stand,” Jay said. “Other than my mom, I mean. You’ll love her.”

“I can’t wait to meet her.”

Jay furrowed his brow, swallowed. “Thanks, for um. For doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Helping me find her. I know it’s out of the way. I mean— we’re sleeping in a fucking field.”

Mike sat up. He brushed the grass off of his side and sighed. “Really, I don’t think there’s a single place I wouldn’t follow you to. You could tell me we’re biking to the ice caps and I’d buy a coat and ask how soon we needed to be there.”

Jay looked up at him finally, appearing almost broken by this revelation. “Why?”

Mike considered for a moment and then realized what he had always felt about Jay, what had always been there whenever they shared a booth in shotty diners or when they shared clients and beds, whenever they shared breath and spit and cum.

“You’re home to me. That’s what it feels like, anyway.” Mike smiled. “I’d miss you too much—feel too lost—if you were to leave without me. I have no choice but to stick by you. It’d feel like ripping out a piece of my heart having it any other way.”

Jay dropped his arms from around his legs. He stared at Mike as if trying to work out a riddle Mike had just proposed. And then, as if the answer had dawned on him suddenly, Jay was on him with his arms wrapped tightly around Mike’s neck and his wet eyes closed tightly where he buried his face against Mike’s throat. Mike wrapped his arms around Jay easily, bringing him closer so he could envelope him in the curve of his larger body. 

Mike combed his fingers through Jay’s hair as he watched the fire, feeling that same burning warmth of home as Jay murmured against his skin in a voice wavering with immense emotion. 

“I love you, man.”

“Yeah,” Mike whispered, “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> https://youtu.be/4mkSmhObS4I


End file.
